Picks and Pans Review: Lost in Boston Iii

Aficionados of Broadway musicals love nothing better than to trade theater lore and arcana. That includes swapping stories about the song that was cut from a show out of town because a production was already too long, the star couldn't sing it or the song, quite frankly, was a dog. This third installment of tunes that never made it to the Great White Way includes numbers scrapped from The Music Man, Gypsy, Guys and Dolls and Where's Charley?, among others. Some are interesting strictly from a historical standpoint: "Older and Wiser" (fetchingly sung here by Michelle Pawk and Tammy Minoff) was the song the lovelorn Susan Watson and Chita Rivera sang in Bye Bye Birdie before Strouse and Adams came up with the far superior "What Did I Ever See in Him?" And there are a few buried treasures: Consider sly, jaunty "Mama's Talkin' Soft" (sung here by Lindsay Ridgeway and Sarah Chapman), which was cut from Gypsy because of staging difficulties; and Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields' wistful, heart-stopping "Pink Taffeta Sample Size 10" (sung by Lynne Wintersteller), which got the hook because it was deemed too sweet for the title character in Sweet Charity. Broadway doesn't always know best. (Varése Sarabande)